Hero's Reward, Chapter one
by Mahtoma
Summary: Alita returns to the city she dreads. Unwanted memories, a new assignment and something to take her mind off it all...
1. A City of Broken Dreams

Hero's Reward  
A Battle Angel Alita/Trigun crossover  
By Ryan "Tresh" Norman and Lee "Va'Tal" Loving  
  
Chapter One: A city of broken dreams  
She wears a coat of colors  
Loved by some, feared by others  
She immortilized,  
In young men's eyes  
-"Beautiful", Creed  
  
The Scrapyards, an enormous city built from broken dreams and rusting metal. A city that should not exist, and does not exist, were it not for the floating city of Tiphares, dropping its waste and useless materials for the hundreds of thousands below to scrounge through and live upon. It is a city of convenience, where every day is a struggle for survival.  
The Scrapyards are a strange, warped vision of the future, the embodiment of all the fears every science-fiction author had seen lurking behind their mind's eye when they slumbered. The city of the apocalyptic future time no one ever thought would come to be. The inhabitants of this horrendous city are twisted and reshaped by metal and plastic into vaguely humanoid monstrosities, preferring the lasting existence a cyborg body would give as opposed to the weak, frail fleshling bodies they were born with, prone to disease and breakage.  
The city of the waste is not an easy one to live in. Inherent dangers lie behind every smiling face and in every darkened alleyway. The danger is so heavy that there is more bloodspill on average in a week than there is rainfall in a year. Life is cheap here, and no one holds anything precious except perhaps the thrill of the moment, the here and now. People rape and murder each other for the sheer ecstasy of it, the escape it allows them for just a few passing seconds before they themselves are snuffed out.  
It is a city of dog-eat-dog, where the weakest are overcome and devoured by the strongest in an ever-flowing river of torment and pain. Peddlers prey on the destitute, who are in turn robbed and slaughtered by the criminals, who are beheaded by the ruthless hunter warriors, whose victims remains are collected and sold by the destitute and peddlers just to survive through another day. The cycle is never ending, and the pain is ever increasing as the world sinks down further into itself.  
In this city dwells, for the moment at least, a young girl. No, on second evaluation, despite all appearance, this is no girl. Her body may hold the appearance of a child, but beneath the clothing and ceramic armor lay a body of tremendous physical strength and agility. Cyberized musculature flexed and relaxed with every swift and sure movement she made. Artificial organs pumped pseudo-blood and oxygen far more efficiently than organic systems ever could. This was more than a mere cybernetic body, this was a weapon.  
And more than a mere weapon, it was a finely Tuned weapon in the hands of a mind that instinctively knew how to use it. Twice dead and thrice born, the consciousness known as Alita had lost all of the memories of her first life, and was doing her best to forget her second, failed life as she adjusted to the hard and bitter third existence she now knew. The only link to either of these lives were the powerful fighting style known as "Panzer Kunst" which she knew instinctively, and the death's head marks slashed into her cheeks below the eyes, gleaming metal used as a warning to any who saw her.  
She walked through the crowded streets of midday Eastern Scrapyards swiftly and without effort. Her innate training allowed her to move as fluid between the small air pockets made in the unorganized hustle and bustle of the citizenry going about their daily lives. Her tattered cloak hid not only her body shape, but the deadly weaponry and armor she carried, although she was not carrying her full arsenal. Were she outwardly carrying all of her weaponry, the people around her would be fleeing in terror from the one-woman powerhouse.  
[Did I have to leave my guns behind, Control?] she thought within her mind, and yet it was directed at someone other than her own subconscious.  
The response was immediate and registered with a slight crackle within her head, [We've been over this, A-1. We cannot guarantee that the deckmen would not consider you a criminal if you brought illegal firearms into the Scrapyards. We may not be able to intervene in time and we don't want you damaging Tiphares property. Deckmen do not come cheaply you know.] The voice was that of Ground Inspection Bureau Chief Bigott, head of the special Tuned, the man who literally owned Alita's body and freedom.  
[I know. It just doesn't feel right. I don't usually need them, but it's comforting to know that they're there.]  
[Your comfort does not matter to us, A-1,] Bigott scoffed in her head, [You are not an employee, and I am not your boss. You are the property of Tiphares. You are our instrument. You will do as we say, understand?]   
[Understood,] the woman sighed. It had been five long years and she still could not get along with her controller. He just didn't seem to care about her as anything more than a tool, to be thrown away once they were done with her. [Who is it we're after this time? Another Barjack sympathizer? A Factory traitor? An old-fashioned bounty?]  
[I hardly think we would employ the million chips a year on you just to find someone any Hunter-Warrior could find for a few thousand. You're job is usually outside of the Scrapyards where our influence is lessened. That is why you rarely come into the city anymore.]  
[Than why am I here?] Alita demanded, [I don't like being here, you know. This City brings up unwanted memories.]  
[That matters even less than your comfort,] Bigott answered bitterly, [You are here to rendezvous with two of our other agents.]  
[Are they Tuned?]  
[Don't be absurd. They are merely Factory Farm Loss Prevention Investigators.]  
[Investigators?] Alita thought with a sneer, [Why do I need to see two investigators?]  
[I want you to escort them out of the city to Farm-14, understood?]  
[Why do I have to baby-sit a couple of paper pushers?] Alita complained, [I'd rather be out in the wastelands taking heads.]  
[You do what we tell you, nothing more,] Bigott said with utter finality.  
[Understood, A-1 out,] Alita thought and cut off her Tuned communications link. She sighed once more, letting out some of the frustration that built up whenever she argued with Bigott. He was such an uncaring bastard, she realized long ago, and his concern for his agents extended only so far as one had concern for a piece of machinery.  
Lost in her own mind, Alita stopped next to a run-down old building, contemplating her next move. The Tuned link had given her all the information she needed on her companions, including where to find them. But there was one little problem, the Factory that they worked through was on the other side of town, a good two day's walk from where she now stood.  
She sighed in resignation and reached into her cloak. She removed a canteen of water that had seen better days and took a long drink. This left her wide open to anyone who might see an easy mark from her.  
One was readily available. He was not exactly a hideous man, but he wasn't handsome either. He wasn't poor, one could tell by his decent suit wardrobe, but he wasn't excessively rich either, as the clothes were a year out of style. He wasn't a full-fledged cyborg, but his right arm gleamed of chrome. All in all he was the kind of guy no one noticed.  
He walked right up to Alita, having spotted her through the crowd moments before. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, at least within the past several hours, and there was something dangerous about the marks across her cheeks, it made her seem mysterious and almost frightening. A trickle of water escaped her lips and dripped down her throat into the cloak, that mysterious cloak that hid what she was shaped like underneath. All in all she had an aura of beauty and mystery, one which he couldn't pass up.  
"Hey, baby," he said with the kind of smile only a piranha could love, all teeth, "You're some pretty sweet meat you know that? I bet you do," he chuckled to himself at the usage of his own words, which he would have, if he had heard of the man, most likely compared them to Shakespeare.  
Alita gave the man a glance and put away her canteen, "I'm not in the mood for games. What do you want?" she asked, crossing her shiny black cloth covered arms against each other.  
"Oh, straight to the point. I like that in a girl," he said, smiling with those teeth again. "Now I was thinking that maybe you and I could have ourselves a little fun," he reached into a pocket, extracted a small hexagon shaped chip and placed it firmly into one of her hands. "So baby, whatta ya say?"  
Alita uncrossed her arms and examined the chip. It was a fifty-piece chip. Small change compared to how much she had accrued in two weeks time once. She glanced at the man, that idiotic grin on his face and gave a little smile, "A little fun, huh?"  
"Yeah, that's all. Just a good way to get to know each other better," he leaned over and whispered into her ear, "A lot better if you get my drift." It was then that he noticed her ear for the first time. It had a screw in it, right where a normal person would place an earring, and there was a line along the side of her head coming downward from out of her raven black hair and into her high-collar jumpsuit. "Oh, a cyber huh? Just how much is meat on you sweet-thing?"  
The girl's smile got a little darker, "Why don't I show you?" and she reached up to remove her cloak.  
The man stopped her. No matter his desire to see the girl unclothed, he had no desire for the rest of the Scrapyards to. "Now, now, sweet-meat. I'm kinky but I ain't that kinky. Let's find someplace a little more private."  
"Where would you suggest?" Alita asked innocently, pursing her lips in the way that made that strangely unreadable half-pucker expression.  
"I know a place nearby where we can have all the fun we want and ain't nobody gonna walk in on us."  
"Lead the way."  
The man grabbed her left hand, noticing that it too was metallic, and pulled her into the crowd. The way the crowd swallowed them would make a normal human disoriented, but as was said before, Alita was not an ordinary human. She grew up her second time near the center of the Scrapyards, and knew how to mix in with the crowds while never being swept up by them.  
The man was no amateur crowd-rider, either. Where before Alita had only seen a blocky jerkiness, she now only saw fluidic motions as he weaved in and out, dragging her along with him. If either took a moment to think about it, they might have actually been able to see the beauty in it.  
Their trek ended quickly, leaving them standing outside of one of the seedier motels of the district. Although Alita had never entered one of these establishments before, she had waited outside many of their kind for bounties to come shambling out, so she knew exactly what they were for.  
"Well?" the man asked, his smile getting wider by the moment. Alita entertained the thought of his smile growing so big it would envelop his head.  
"Let's go," she said plainly, still hiding something in her voice.  
The man didn't notice. He was too focused on the thought of upcoming pleasure to really think about the way she was acting. He pulled her along inside.  
The interior of the building was even more hideous then the exterior. Perhaps it had once been a nice place, but there was no evidence of this any more. The walls had been painted repeatedly, but not anytime recently, and each layer was pealing worse than the last. Everywhere Alita looked, there was another cyber-junkie passed out, most likely from some kind of overdose.  
The woman at the front desk had a look of indifference upon her wrinkled and haggard visage, as she tapped a few chips against the decaying desk with long, pierced fingernails. She wore dozens of gold bangles, necklaces, and rings, but all of them hinted at fakes, and she had no desire to tell anyone differently. This was a fall from grace woman if Alita had ever met one. "Wha'da ya want?" she demanded with a hideous accent.  
"The young lady and I would like to rent out one of your rooms for a few hours," the man said gleefully.   
"That'll be twenty chips," the woman said. It almost sounded like a recording, something she had said dozens of times a day, and countless thousands within a year.   
The man paid the woman, remarking, "You're an expensive little thing," as if the twenty chips were a fortune in gold, and received his key, "Room 209," he read on the key, "My lucky number, I guess," he commented. Alita was about to say something, only to be cut off when he dragged her up the stairs.  
The second story was in worse condition than the first, which was becoming expected. Urine stains and excrement coated the floor, and spray paint covered the walls in strange almost satanic symbols. A few more passed out cyborgs littered the hallways, a few moaning as they tried to move, then falling back when the pain became too great.  
The man stopped at the door marked 209, although the plate was missing. In its place was the number scrawled on with a heavy marker. "I guess this is the place."  
"It appears that way," Alita agreed. She was starting to regret her decision. She was going to an awful lot of trouble just to vent her frustrations.  
The man unlocked the door and dragged Alita through, then quickly closed and locked the door before the girl could say a word, "Don't want you trying to run off, now do we?"  
"I won't run," Alita eyed the man carefully, finally having freed her wrist from his grasp, "Not until I'm done." She glanced around the room. It was dark and dismal, the only light coming from an old hanging bulb, which started swinging wildly when the man accidentally bumped into it, and from the few cracks in the boards that had covered the broken window that allowed a few meager rays of the outside's lights inward. The room was filled with pieces of junk, bottles, broken crates, forgotten clothes, and the occasional stray one-piece chip. The bed was a disgusting compilation of old and oft used sheets, shreds of clothing, and a mixture of stains, a few which reeked of blood. It was the worst place one could bring a nice girl to.  
"Now, it's not that I don't trust you, but, I don't want you to run off like the others have, you understand."  
"Oh, you've had others here?"  
"Oh, there've been many others, although not here. I've had so many kinds of woman all across the city, but none as pretty as you."  
The girl gave a half-smile at the man's pretense of her beauty, something she really didn't consider often. "I like an experienced man."  
"And you? Are you an experienced woman? Have you done this sort of thing often?"  
"Oh, once or twice."  
"Good, good," he said, removing his jacket and shirt. Alita could then see things she had not noticed before. His right arm was completely cybernetic, and that stretched to an area over his heart, with excess metal covering the tender flesh-steel mesh. He was covered in light scars, indicating either a dangerous job or a dangerous hobby. Either way, Alita was more suspicious of the man than ever. "Let's get down to it, then."  
"Agreed," Alita smiled, and removed her cloak, letting it drift to the ground. She stood before him, legs spread and hands on her hips, "Like what you see?"  
The man's mouth gaped open in amazement. "Boy, do I ever!" he exclaimed. He had guessed that the girl had a good figure, but he didn't realize just how good. Though her height gave her the appearance of a child, she had proportions that were anything but. Curves everywhere he looked, accentuated by the armor and bodysuit she wore, and though her breasts were not excessively large, they were perfect in his mind.  
The thing that completely eluded his one-track mind was her body armor and weapons. Real combat armor was so out of place in the Scrapyards that it didn't even register to him that it was really there. The weapons were noticed immediately and forgotten. Everyone in the Scrapyards carried a weapon of one kind or another. He did not understand that the girl was a real and true danger. All he saw was that hint of mystery and danger that excited him.  
Alita started to remove her armor, but the man interrupted her. He walked up and kissed her deeply, something she wasn't prepared for. When he pulled back, she felt true disgust, and a feeling of sickness permeated her insides. He had tasted as foul as the aura he gave off, possibly even worse. Though her body had very few receptors, and none in regards to casual contact, she still felt as if it was trying to crawl away from the points where he had touched her.  
She decided rather quickly that she needed to get this over with now. She reached behind her back and grabbed a small dagger, one he would most likely never see, and hid it within a port on her arm, while her other hand removed the snaps on her armored breastplate. It clattered to the floor with a resounding thud, indicating greater weight than appearances estimated.  
"No, no, baby, let me," the man said, and he reached forward to help her remove a boot, drool dripping from his plain smiling face.  
She let him get within inches of her boot when she kicked forward, using a mere fraction of the strength she wielded and yet powerful enough to knock him clear across the room. He flew, or more so tumbled, through the air ungracefully and struck hard, cracking the already unstable plaster and wood with his sheer bulk. He was disoriented and hurting, but that wasn't enough for Alita. That wouldn't satisfy her need.  
"You bitch!" he shouted through a bloody mouth. His face was already swollen and his nose was clearly broken, all a result of her kick. He stumbled to his feet in a jerking fashion, as if he were a broken marionette, and removed a long rusty dagger from a sheath hidden in his boot. It did not gleam in the dim light the swinging lamp gave off; its rust had dulled the once proud blade from ever doing such a thing again. "Now I'm gonna have to teach you, just like I had to teach the others!" he shouted ferally. The look on his face had shifted; becoming that of a true madman's, losing all that it meant to be human in a fraction of a second.  
"I sincerely doubt you could teach me anything," Alita remarked hatefully. She just stood in wait for the man, silently preparing to take him on.  
"I'll kill you!" he screamed, rushing towards her, knife waving around while foam and blood spilled from his lips and mouth.  
Alita said nothing, she merely stepped aside, letting him pass, while her right arm reached over and wrapped itself around the upper part of his left, the one holding the rusted blade. With an imperceptible motion and a loud crack, the bones in his arm and shoulder shattered, and his arm was removed forcefully.  
The man rushed past another few feet when the pain finally registered in his feral mind. He stopped suddenly, nearly tripping over a broken crate in the process, and stared at his bloody stump. A few bones still extended from the wound, showing just how brutally his arm had been torn from him while blood streamed from it at a steady rate, like a waterfall. He tried to scream out in agony, but the sound wouldn't come. His mind could not accept that he had just been wounded in such a manner, and so refused to give in to the "false" feelings of pain.  
Alita turned toward the man, letting the severed limb drop from her arm-lock and into her hand. She then tossed the bloody arm over to him, letting it drop limply at his feet. "This is yours, I'm guessing?"  
He dropped to his knees, staring at his arm without any hint of recognition in his eyes. His mind once again refused to believe it was his arm sitting there before him. He looked back up at Alita, trying to speak, but only able to mouth the words, "why?"  
"Why?" Alita asked incredulously, "You want to know why?"  
The man could not answer, only nod his head in mute request.  
She walked forward and knelt before him, brushing the useless arm out of her way. The man tried to utter a protest, but she grabbed his face, forcing him to look her in the eye. "You've killed, haven't you? I can see it in your eyes, and I can see the stains on your cyborg arm. You can wash it and clean it all you want, but the blood will never really go away. So I ask you, have you killed any girls?"  
He nodded his head as best he could within the confines of the girl's cyborg hands.  
"Daughters, mothers, sisters, woman and children? You've raped and killed?"  
He nodded again, whispering out, "Yes."  
"So you can speak again," Alita noted dryly, "Tell me, how many?"  
"I don't..." he gasped.  
Alita did not like the answer he gave. She reached out with her free hand and reached down into the man's pants, grasping his most precious limb. He had not yet defecated himself, which surprised her, his kind usually gave in to such basics rather quickly. "You know what I did to your arm, so you can guess what I can do to this. Now, I want an answer. How many?"  
"So many... Hard to keep track... Dozens..." he gasped louder, the prospect of losing his manhood spurring him on.  
"Dozens," the cyborg girl muttered, "So sad to think of all those lives you've ruined just for your petty lusts. Which did you like the best, the women or the little girls."  
"Girls! So innocent..." he blurted.  
Alita scowled, "You make me sick!" and with a single motion she ripped his manhood from him, crushing it into paste with her powerful hand.  
"AAAHHH!!!" he screamed, the pain finally registering in his fear-driven mind. The pain washed over him in torrents, causing the blood vessels in his eyes to burst, and filling his flickering vision with blood.  
"You will never again hurt any more innocents. I've made sure of that," Alita said, her voice filled with disgust. She opened the port in her arm and released the small dagger into her palm, and then threw it to the ground mere inches from the man's face. "If you have any decency in your soul, you'll do the right thing."  
The man eyed the dagger through the blood and pain, and weighed his options. He could grab the knife and attack the girl, maybe even manage to kill her before she could finish him off. But that wouldn't work, he knew. She tore him apart effortlessly, she could finish him just as easily.  
Alita wasn't really paying attention anymore. She picked up her breastplate and snapped it back into place, covering her torso from his bloody eyes once again. She didn't know why, but she didn't want the man looking at any more of her body, as if his eyes could see through her clothing and armor and glare at the body that lay beneath.   
She then reached down and grabbed her rectangular package, strapping it to her back with care, for what lay within was her last true connection with the life she had before. She picked up her cloak and wrapped it around her body again, grateful for its concealing ability.   
The man watched her do this with limited curiosity. His mind was regressing, finding little could hold its attention for long. He reached out and grabbed the dagger with his remaining hand, his metallic fingers convulsing with anticipation. He reached up and slashed, striking flesh and drawing blood. The light in his eyes went out, and he collapsed to the ground with a smile on his face no one would ever understand.   
Alita regarded the man with distaste. She would have to bathe her hand in raw sewage soon, or else the stench of his manhood would never come off. So she left the room, giving one last look over her shoulder at the man. No more would the bloody mess stare at her figure again.  
--------------  
As the girl stepped out of the building, she felt the familiar crackle of her Tuned link as it came to life. She knew what was coming on the other end, but she really didn't care.  
[What were you doing, A-1?] the voice demanded.  
[What does it matter, Control?] Alita answered hatefully, [I'm sure you were watching the entire time. If you don't know what happened from seeing what I did, than I don't think I could explain it any better.]  
[We know what you did, A-1. That's not the point. We want to know 'why' you did it. We thought you might be regressing back into a Hunter-Warrior, killing that man for his head and the reward. But you didn't take his head. You didn't even kill him. Why?]  
The cyborg Tuned laughed out loud, eliciting a few questioning looks from passerbys.  
[What's so funny?!] Control demanded.  
[Don't you get it?] Alita asked the master of her leash, [I guess you don't. You watched me from afar for almost two years, gauging my abilities and learning my personality, and yet you still don't understand me. What I did in there, I did for more than my own selfishness, more than just for some reward. I did what I felt was necessary because I knew in my heart that it was right.]  
[You have no decision over what is right and wrong. We tell you what you need to know.]  
[That's a laugh. You can tell me what you think I need to know, but you can't tell me what's right and what's wrong. I saw a man who I knew was a danger to others, and so I took care of him. I couldn't stand the thought of him hurting any more woman.]  
Bigott coughed over the link, then resumed, [Very well then. Resume your mission. I will 'shock' you the next time you break orders like that.]  
[Very well, Control,] Alita sighed. She would never be able to get through to the man, not in five years, in ten, nor even a hundred.  
[You know, we scanned the man's face through the Factory. He was a bounty. Would you like to know his name?]  
[No. His name should die with him. It should never be uttered again.]  
  



	2. A Field of Jagged Sorrows

Chapter two: A field of jagged sorrows  
Rover,  
Wanderer,  
Nomad,  
Vagabond,  
Call me what you will...  
-"Wherever I may roam", Metallica  
  
The outlands, an endless desert stretching out as far as the eye can see. An area of land so horrendous and so vicious that no human or cyborg could survive alone out amongst the sand and rock for long. A land that, once long ago was prosperous and filled with trees and greenery and hope, where humans lived, loved and died in conjunction with nature.  
No one is quite sure what happened to ruin the lands, making everything so desolate, but a general consensus is that it must be man's fault. Man's greed and longing for power must have stripped the forests to the ground, and burned the life from the animals. But as all things, just because one can point the blame doesn't mean anything can be done about it. The remainder of man's selfish ambition can not undo what hath been wrought, and they cannot rebuild the world as penance. They must simply suffer as the world goes through its darkest era.  
But the outlands are not completely desolate. Ancient cities dot the vast desert, even more lie buried beneath the unforgiving sand, giving a glimpse as to the way the world might have once been, and Factory Farms, small cities themselves, raise plants and animals that are all but extinct anywhere else. These Farms are a purer example of humanity, few cyborgs walk amongst the full-fleshed humans in these outposts of the olden-days. If this balance should ever be tipped, catastrophe, and the Factories cannot allow that.  
The Farms do not exist merely to exist, however. They serve a far greater purpose than one might imagine. Each of these Farms grows the food and mines for the basic materials Tiphares needs to keep itself running. On a smaller, more indirect level, they provide food for the Scrapyards, food that, for the most part, the yards can never provide itself, its own lands covered in machinery and far greater desolation than outside. The Farms are necessary for the continued existence of all, and they are watched carefully by the Factories, never being allowed to govern themselves for fear of losing the resources Tiphares so desperately needs.  
Linking each of these Factory Farms to the Scrapyards are a grouping of trains, each powered by a fully working nuclear power plant. Without these trains, the resources and food would take forever to reach Tiphares. Being so necessary to production, the Factories hire out Hunter-Warriors and money hungry lunatics to ride the trains as Rail Mercenaries, armed escorts for dangerous assignments.  
These mercenaries are on rare occasion, put to use for assignments that have nothing to do with protecting the trains. Dirty jobs like halting Farm rebellions, tracking down supply bandits, or even hunting down the occasional bounty that has escaped the rabid hunters of the Scrapyards, looking for freedom in the outlands.  
One such group of these mercenaries has been assigned to hunt down a vicious outlaw, one so dangerous that sixty-billion chips have been placed on his head. A man reputedly so dangerous that seven entire Farms have been destroyed at his hands. A man whose reputation for bloodlust has found no equal in the entire world. This man has no face. This man has no past. This man is merely known as Vash the Stampede.  
------------  
Victor Elizondo was getting annoyed.  
Not the kind of annoyed other, more rational people feel when something doesn't go their way. The kind of annoyed where they groan and complain for a while and then give up. No, this annoyed was more like the kind someone gets when they don't get what they want and decide to hit someone for it. He had already done that several times to more than half of his men, and they were becoming rebellious because of it.  
But Victor couldn't help it. For his entire life he had always had a bad temper, and it was that temper that had gotten him noticed when the Factory was calling out for volunteers to eliminate Vash the Stampede. He had beaten the elected team leader into unconsciousness and taken his position, threatening to do the same to anyone who wished to argue the matter. The Factory was impressed by this display of machismo and gave him the field leader position on the assault team.  
But the Factory wasn't out there in the wastelands to back him up. He was alone with a group of armed and vicious men whose rage had been building for five days. For the five days they had been suffering under grueling conditions and empty promises that the man they were after would be over that next hill.  
Victor turned and looked at Number Forty-three, the cylindrical Deckman they had to carry with them as per mission requirements. It was a hideous thing, with the ugly false face plastered against the side like the stretched out remains of a corpse and the pathetic attempt at an accent every one of them spoke with. It was an enormously heavy thing, and required three men to lift and carry its bulk, which slowed their traveling exponentially. He desperately wanted to leave it behind, but if they strayed any farther than fifty meters from it, the explosives built into their arsenal vests would explode, taking their heads with them.  
"Haven't you found anything yet, Forty-three?" he demanded of the creature.  
"No, ahm afwaid I haven't," Forty-three answered, its artificial accent making Victor's teeth grind.  
"But the information that we acquired from Farm twenty-two said he had come this way. At the very least he had to have left a trail," one of the mercenaries argued. Victor didn't know his name, he didn't bother to learn any of their names, but this one he liked the least. He spoke too much, and used too many big words that the simple violent man didn't understand.  
"That mah be," Fourty-three agreed, "But the outwands have a way of ewasing evedance."  
"It don't matter!" Victor shouted loud enough for all twelve men to hear. "We keep walking till we find the bastard and then we blow his head off!"  
"But, sir," that same man argued, "If we blow his head off we won't have any way to identify him and collect our chips."  
Victor walked right up to the man and slugged him hard, sending him to the ground with a loud smack. Blood oozed from the man's mouth as he gripped the damaged jaw. Hopefully, for both men's sake, his jaw was broken and he could say no more to anger the savage. "You wanna argue more?" he demanded. When the man said nothing, he smiled, one of those smiles you would expect from an animal who had closed in on the kill, "Good."  
The ten other mercenaries were at the end of their limits. They had endured five days of brutal treatment at the hands of their captain and they had had enough. One of them stepped forward, desperately trying to get his assault rifle to function, but it wouldn't. The safety lock imposed by Forty-three prevented them from firing.  
Without their guns to make things easier, they decided for the direct approach. They surrounded their captain, preparing to swamp him and beat him in the same way he had beaten them. They wanted to hear bone crunch and blood spray as he begged for mercy and received none.  
This would never come to pass however, as Forty-three, who was oblivious to their intended actions, screamed out in alarm. "We have an intwudah in the awea! We have and intwudah!"  
"Shut up!" Victor shouted, "I'm sick of you're stupid talking!"  
The Deckman did not care about Victor's opinions. It merely did as it was intended to do. "At his estimated pace, the intwudah will come within visual wange in two minutes. Be awert!" it warned.  
The men, although eager to introduce their captain to a whole new level of pain and suffering, had enough common sense to abandon their goals and prepare for the intruder. They hid behind the various rocks and outcroppings the desert land provided them with, waiting impatiently for potential action.  
Two minutes came and went slowly, and eventually the intruder made himself visible. He was a strange sight, tall and lanky, most unsuited for one who lived in the wastelands, and his skin was light, almost pale, which was equally strange. He wore a red coat, buttoned so tightly that little above the waist could float free in the wind, while below it billowed and waved as if it were alive. His pants were black and tightly strapped together, right down to his boots, which seemed to merge seemlessly with the rest. One arm was completely covered by the red coat, while the other was uncovered, revealing more of the strange black strappings. Across his back was a seemingly normal brown rucksack, the kind people used to go camping in the olden days. In total, the man looked unlike anything they had expected.  
Everyone was still, expecting everything and nothing from the strange looking man in red. Even Victor, who would normally be yelling and punching, was motionless, not knowing how to gauge the intruder in his midst. The only one who escaped this atmosphere of silence was Forty-three, whose remnants of a human brain had no recollection of how dramatic situations played out. He broke the silence in a most uncomfortable and screeching way:  
"Please state youwah name and puhpose."  
The man regarded the men through his yellow-tinted circular sunglasses, as if he were studying them intently. His jagged blonde hair blew wildly in the afternoon wind, creating a strangely imposing look to a man whose skinny appearance would be regarded as weak in the Scrapyards.   
The men were eagerly anticipating his response, hoping he was friendly, and fearing he was enemy. His first words would decide if he was to be welcomed as a brother, or cut down as an enemy. They were ready for the best and they had thought of the worst. But all of their plans were as nothing when he opened his thin mouth and spoke:  
"Hello Brothers, how are you doing today? Would you like a doughnut? They're very good," he said cheerfully. He dropped his large brown rucksack on the ground and opened it wide, removing varied objects of even more varied worth until he came upon a small, white box. His eyes lit up when he found the box, and he held it out to the mercenaries as if it were filled with diamonds or gold.  
The mercenaries were floored by his actions. Never, in all their years of brutal experience and harsh situations had they come across someone, let alone a man, who had such cheerful innocence in his actions.  
And yet, like before, the only one unaffected was Forty-three, who did not comprehend the man's actions. The entire time he was in range, the creature's computer systems were hard at work, matching and verifying against dozens of descriptions. When it had reached a concensus of fifty-five percent, which in its garbled mind was "good enough". It went into full alert mode, four feet extended from its base and locked in place on the uneven ground, while armor plates extended to protect its fragile, if bulky frame. It announced as loud as a klaxxon, "Alert, alert! Intruder identified as Vash the Stampede! Gun safeties disengaged! Attack and eliminate!" There were no traces of the annoying accent. All pretenses of familiarity were dropped as events escalated to the matter at hand.  
The mercenaries were almost as surprised to find their assault rifles in hand and the targeting unit fitted across their right eye, as they were at their first introduction to the strange man. Each of their minds was filled with lingering doubt that the cheerful stranger couldn't possibly be the Factory's most wanted criminal.  
Each of them, that is, except for Victor. He had doubts, but he really didn't care. He could use his rifle, and that meant he could shoot at people, and if the Deckman said that the stranger was Vash the Stampede, then so be it. He fired off a few quick bursts, hoping to fill his target with so many holes all his blood would evacuate at once. He didn't really worry that the man might not be Vash, that he might just be an unfortunate passerby who matched enough of the descriptions to be called Vash, he just wanted to let out his frustrations in the most violent way possible.  
The bullets flew randomly, despite the targeting computer and eyepiece, and even a moderate soldier could have dodged easily enough, but this man was far more than a moderate soldier. He jumped, no, more like flew, through the air with the grace of a bird, and dropped behind a boulder and into safety. It was a feet no man should have been capable of, but the blonde did it without effort, as if he had done it a thousand times before.  
The man's movements would have dumbfounded most humans, but not Victor and his men. The mercenaries did not bother with the confusion that laid heavily on their minds. They chalked his actions up to being a cyber, and quickly decided he needed to be eliminated quickly. Cybers were far more dangerous than humans, after all. That was the way of a professional soldier, and though these men were far from professionals, they thought of themselves as such.  
As example of their absence of fighting skill, they hung back, away from the outcropping, unknowing of what the man might do. Even an average military tactician would know that surround and destroy would work, especially with the man lying low behind a few rocks. He was a single man, completely outnumbered and outgunned, and yet they halted in fear. Their guns shook visibly in their hands as they slowly moved forward.  
An object flew through the air from behind the rocks, round and thick, with a hole in the center. The mercenaries' guns shot up in the general direction, releasing a stream of bullets that quickly reduced the objects to crumbs.  
And crumbs were all they really were, for the man had flung a donut into the air. It was a bizarre, almost whimsical thing to do, and yet it made sense. Gauge the enemy's mindset, strengths, weaknesses, and weaponry, the first job of a good warrior, and he had done just so with a single sacrificial pastry.   
He reached into his blood red coat and extracted a long, sleek revolver, gleaming of silver and death. This was no ordinary gun, and from the way the man held it, he was no ordinary gunman.  
He reached up with the gun, just out of the sight of the men, and fired off a round, seemingly in waste. But few things this man did were in waste, and the bullet struck the ground in such a way that sent dozens of rocks flying through the air.  
This confused the group of mercs. The man was being completely random in his choice of actions, and that made no sense to the hardened murderers turned soldiers. They were used to direct violence or cowardice, the full out assault or the fearful fleeing for one's life. This half-hearted effort made no sense.  
The strange man took this hesitation and used it to his advantage. With a howl he jumped from his hiding place and went into action, faster than they could possibly react in the state they were in. His gun fired blasts of silver death, and though each one hit their mark, none were fatal. This was the way of the strange man.  
Victor continued to fire off his assault rifle the entire time, trying to dissolve his opponent into a puddle of flesh and blood. His shots were wild, however, unfocused and heedless toward the outcries of the targeting computer, and his crew was punished for it. Fellow after fellow were dropped as his mad firing ripped into their cybered or fleshed bodies, tearing them apart with the deadly power contained in each round.  
And yet, despite the vicious carnage unleashed by Victor's weapon, not a one of his teammates was dead. Scratched up, banged up, shot up, but not a one dead or dying. Victor didn't bother to think about such things, the same way he did not bother with watching out for his comrades. All he could think about was killing his opponent.  
"This is very inefficient," Forty-three's armored body said almost mournfully, "Alert units, target Vash's skill is greater than anticipated. Coordinate and eliminate." It said this mechanically, with only cold logic, yet logic was not going to win this battle. It had already been lost, yet no one could truly see this except perhaps the strangely flitting man.  
"Damn it, stand still you piece of shit!" Victor shouted as another volley of ammunition tore the body of one of his men into bloody shreds as he attempted to kill his acrobatic opponent.  
"You coward, is there anything more despicable than a loathsome slime like yourself to kill his own men? I think not," the dexterous stranger argued.  
"I don't care about any of them! They're just street trash to me! If they die, I won't mind!" Victor growled. He fired off his last few rounds, each one striking nowhere near his target. His barrel clicked empty.  
"Now it's my turn," the stranger's face became that of pure disgust as he aimed his gun with deadly accuracy. A single shot rang out, belching smoke from the barrel of the sleek silver weapon. The sound was like a thunderclap, or the voice of God shouting in anger. The bullet flew fast and true, silver and gold death all in one little cylinder.   
And yet, death was not the result. The bullet struck Victor's rifle at the joint that connected it to his weapon's vest, severing servos and connectors, and leaving the snarling man with a broken toy.  
"You bastard!" Victor screamed, and hurled his weapon with vicious intent. And yet again he missed his target by whole yards. "Fight me like a man!"  
"After what you have done, you dare to ask for a fair fight? I cannot condone the slaughter of human lives," the stranger said solemnly, walking right up to Victor. With a single, fluid motion he back-handed the psychotic killer across the face, sending him crashing to the barren ground, "You are a man of no honor."  
"You're a piece of shit!" Victor growled, wiping a hand across his now bloodied face. He reached into a pocket and pulled out a wickedly sharp knife, the weapon with which he planned to kill his humilliator. He lunged forward, putting all of his strength into the arm holding the knife, hoping to draw the blood of death from his opponent.  
The stranger avoided the attack easily and gave him a swift knee to the stomach. More blood erupted from his mouth and he was brought coughing back to the ground. But Victor refused to let that stop him. He twisted as he fell and lashed out with the knife, coming within an inch of his opponent's throat.   
But an inch is not nearly close enough when the enemy's skill is as high as this man's was. To the stranger, it might as well have been a mile. He reached out with his right hand and grasped the knife hand's wrist, wrenching it just enough to make Victor let go. "Sharp toys can hurt people, you know," he said with a smile.  
"Ba... bastard!" Victor spat blood at the stranger, striking him across the cheek with the red liquid.  
The stranger slapped him again, never missing a beat, "You have no right to call me or anyone else that. You are a murderer."  
"Who cares?" Victor spat a tooth out, "They deserved to die anyway!"  
The stranger gritted his teeth, "No one deserves to die like that, not even you! I..." He was about to say more, but was cut off as a hail of gunfire pelted the ground next to his foot. He jumped away, letting Victor drop to the ground like a sack of cement.  
The man's eyes regarded the rail mercenary with a steady, piercing gaze, a gaze that could bore straight through a block of solid titanium. "Are you as much of a coward as he is? Would you actually serve such a man if you had a choice?" the threat of death had not phased the stranger at all.  
"No! But it's my job!" the rail mercenary answered, "I don't like doing this work, but if I kill you then I'll never have to suffer again," the grip on his rifle was weakening, his aim was wavering. His uncertainty was obvious.  
"Money will not solve your problems. It will only make things worse," the stranger said sadly, "It can't make everything better like you hope."  
"Maybe not..." the mercenary admitted, "But at least I can suffer in piece," and he pulled the trigger.  
The stranger reached down and grabbed Victor's body with one hand and shot up into the sky in a blinding flash so fast that the unnamed mercenary could barely take it all in. Bullets embedded themselves uselessly in the dirt, another waste of dwindling resources attributed to a foolish human.  
At the apex of his jump, the stranger aimed his gun again, one last bullet left in the chamber, and fired, all of his hopes and dreams encased in that single bullet. It struck as it should, and yet death was not the result. Blood seeped from a shoulder wound on the right arm, the arm that carried the rifle. The Rail mercenary was neutralized with a single shot.  
That was the last of them. The others had already been wounded or killed by each other's wild shots, while the intellectual mercenary Victor had slugged earlier never managed the strength to raise his weapon in assault. The stranger sighed, "So much waste. Why must we do this over and over?"  
"Let me go, you bastard!" Victor shouted and struggled in the stranger's iron hold.  
The blonde man relaxed his arm and Victor landed on the ground ungracefully, blood seeping from his mouth and nose. "I'm going to leave you with something you weren't willing to leave me with," he said solemnly.  
"What's that?" Victor demanded, trying to muster the strength to attack again. There was none left, the stranger had sapped it all from him.  
"Your life," he said, and the stranger walked off, disappearing into the deserted wastelands of the charred Earth.  
"Come back here, you son of a bitch!" Victor shouted with all the strength he had left. It was far too late, however, for the man was long gone.  
"Vash assassin squad twenty-three ineffective. Initiating survivor elimination," the Deckman announced. In a single instant forty-one explosive devices in eleven assault vests went off simultaneously, killing each and every surviving member of the assault squad in a gory display of ruthlessness. Even those that were already dead were annihilated for no apparent reason other than thoroughness.  
Every member died quickly, yet it was a death of extreme pain, an instant of utter agony that seemed to stretch on into infinity in the last half-second of life. Every member's life was brought to an abrupt and unjust end; never would they have a chance to experience greatness, or to redeem themselves of their past sins. No, every one of them unfairly blinked out without ever making a real impact in the world.  
But there was one... Victor Elizondo was still alive. Only one of his four explosives went off, and though the wound he acquired from the one charge would most likely kill him within hours, for now he was still breathing. He crawled as well as he could with a shattered shoulder and missing arm, desperately trying to survive, hoping beyond hope that he could make it to Farm twenty-two before death claimed his soul. He had to survive, he had to...  
He had to get revenge on Vash the Stampede.  
As he crawled he spared a short glance back at his executioner, the Deckman with the kill switch. He was surprised to see smoke rising from its body as it fired its own circuits. It had failed in its assignment, just like his men had, and now it had to pay the price for its failure. If it had a soul, it was most likely crying out in anguish as life, or half-life fled its metallic body.  
He crawled on, but not much farther. The blood loss was too much, and his mind was quietly slipping away. As darkness enveloped him, he imagined his enemy one last time... Vash...  
--------------  
"Now what have we here?" a harsh sounding voice rang out, "It appears this one is still fresh!"  
Victor reawakened to confusion and pain. A volatile mixture if there ever was one. He heard voices all around him, but only two were real. He tried to see the owners of the voices, but his eyes refused to focus, and all he could picture were blurred images.  
"But Doctor, he's so... hideous," a female voice, this one filled with malice and hatred, argued.  
"Well, they can't all be as beautiful as you are, my dear Eelai. He has been through a great deal and yet he still lives. I cannot allow such a fantastic spirit like that to die!" the voice called "Doctor" answered.  
"You're going to rebuild him? Like the others?" the female Eelai asked.  
"No. I think I shall have some fun with this one," the "Doctor" replied. Victor's vision finally came into focus again and he saw the man behind the voice. He was tall, and dressed in threadbare clothes, that bared a similarity to the clothing of a stereotypical scientist, white lab-coat over a rumpled cheap business suit. Strange glasses adorned his face, with what looked like binocular lenses instead of glass, which obscured his face and covered his eyes completely. His forehead was wrinkled, as if he were in deep contemplation, but that was not the case. His mouth was wide in a hideous smile, one which caused Victor to shiver in fear.  
"Who..." the dying man whispered, "Who are you?"  
"I am the man who will make you a legend. I am the man who will make you whole again, and better than you've ever been before," the "Doctor" exclaimed, his face becoming even more insane-looking than ever before.  
"Why?"  
"Because I can, dear boy!" the "Doctor" replied. He walked past Victor's body, out of the wounded man's sight over by where the bodies of his men were lying around. Victor had not made it very far before his wounds had forced his collapse, his movement was slow and awkward, and so the bodies were too close for comfort. "Ah, what's this?"  
"Did you find something, Doctor?" the female voice asked. Victor turned his head and focused on her. She was beautiful, to say the least, and her tattered black clothing left little to the imagination. The expression on her face, however, was far from beautiful. She had a wild, insane look in her eyes that dredged up old fears in Victor's soul. Fears of a girl with that same look in her eyes... The woman looked at him with pitiless eyes, and the arrow shape on her forehead almost seemed to gleam with vicious intent. "You should feel honored to participate in Doctor Nova's work."  
Victor did not, could not answer. His throat was far too clogged with blood for a decent reply.  
"Amazing. The explosions were centered around their heads and yet there are still pieces of brain intact, incredible, simply incredible. And over here we have a Deckman. I've been wanting to tinker with one of these for ages. Yes, we have so much to work with here," the mad Doctor Nova mused, "Eelai! Get Bazarld and get a few vats. We have work to do! And pick up the live one while you're at it!"  
Victor blacked out for the second time as the strange madwoman lifted his mutilated body over her shoulder as if he were nothing. This time he was sure he would be dead before he woke a second time.  
  



End file.
